A Cheap Ticket to the Dance: Systematic Bias in College Basketball's Ratings Percentage Index

A contest model is constructed to examine the existence of conference bias in college basketball's Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). Though a general RPI bias has been identified in previous literature, this is the first study to address whether the bias is random or systematic in nature. Within the theoretical model, the RPI is shown to be systematically biased against teams in high ability conferences, even when all teams play to expectation and can be transitively compared. Further, the bias can prevent the RPI from producing an ordinal mapping from revealed team ability level to the real number line. Given the longevity of the controversial RPI as the NCAA''s primary measure of team ability, these results may indicate that the NCAA is serving a demand for team heterogeneity in selecting for the NCAA Men''s Basketball Tournament.bias

A 'manual on masculinity'? The consumption and use of mediated images of masculinity among teenage boys in Ireland

Most of the research on masculinity in Ireland stresses the influences of family, work and education in the construction of gender (Ferguson, 1998; Ferguson and Synott, 1995; Ferguson and Reynolds, 2001; McKeown et al., 1998, Owens, 2000). Although the impact of the entertainment media is regularly alluded to, there is a dearth of empirical work in this area. While it is generally agreed that mediated images play a highly influential role in young people's lives, both the nature and the scope of this influence remain unclear in the absence of concrete ethnographies of reception. This paper discusses the findings of a quantitative and qualitative investigation into Irish male teenagers’ consumption and reception of a broad range of media texts and discusses these findings in relation to the relevant literature. It points to the shortcomings of both 'hypodermic needle' theories, which claim direct media influence, and of some active audience theories, which posit consumers as impervious to ideological influence. Contrary to popular discourses which frame the media as an autonomous, regressive force that lags behind a more progressive reality, the findings presented here suggest that mediated fictions are part of wider 'gender scripts' (Nixon, 1996) that both inform and are informed by the social structures within which (male) viewers are immersed

The dynamics of divorce, income, and female labor force participation in Singapore.

Singapore has experienced rising income and female labor force participation over the years. This growth, however, is also accompanied by increasing divorce rate. This paper utilizes Granger causality tests within a multivariate error correction framework to examine the short-run and long-run causal interactions among divorce, income and female labor force participation in Singapore. The long–run results suggest the presence of tradeoffs between income, female labor participation and the family unit, with the twin objectives of economic expansion and the move to draw more women into the labor market having a negative impact on the institution of marriage.causality, divorce, female labor force participation, income, Singapore

Interculturalism and multiculturalism in lreland: textual strategies at work in the media landscape

This essay is based on qualitative research undertaken by the Working Group on Media and Interculturalism, based at Dublin City University. The working group is a series of ongoing research projects exploring recent initiatives in the Irish media that have introduced and activated discourses on multiculturalism, interculturalism, anti-racism, diversity and citizenship. The purpose of this project was to explore how the Irish media is contributing to structuring (and normalising) the discourses in which, and through which, public understandings of and responses to socio-cultural changes are being formed

A software architecture for autonomous spacecraft

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 47).by Jimmy S. Shih.M.Eng